It amuses me deeply to reflect that somewhere today, in another entirely fictional branch of time, Warrick lives, Natalie Davis never existed, and Grissom and Sara are getting married. 

I'm still pretty proud of that one.  *grin*

I have no real opinion about Disney's buyout of Marvel, but my muse took the idea and ran with it, clear out past left field and into a non-Euclidean space.  Libra is Tony/Pepper and rated G, and the gorgeous banner is by cincoflex!  Seriously, it couldn't be more perfect.

This appears to be a new author, but goodness knows if they were writing somewhere else previously.  The skill certainly implies it.  Step One by Aaron Cronin is a quick Iron Man story that manages to be both funny and touching at the same time--and that addresses an issue that often goes ignored.  Very clever, and a read that leaves me wanting more.  

tres_mechante's Book Lovers.  Not graphic but definitely adult.  Marvelous! 

Ohhh, I've been waiting to rec this one!  cincoflex's stunner Clandestine, which will break your heart in the most bittersweet fashion.  Be warned: it is  Iron Man, Obadiah/OC (and what an OC!), and most definitely adult.  Yummy, yummy, yummy. 

I'm pleased to boast that my Website has now passed a million hits, present total standing at 1,000,063.  Wheee!  I'm sure the total is higher, since the site was up for a while before I put in the counter, but it's still nice to have the visual confirmation, as it were. 

I figured I'd pass the million mark sometime this year, but I wasn't expecting it until next month at the soonest.  Light in the Mirror has been up for 4.36 years, according to Freeservers, which puts it at sometime in 2004, I guess--I can't remember precisely.  I do know it was after I started posting CSI fanfic on Fanfiction.net, so that seems to match. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has gone to my site to read my stories all this time.  I know, it's only fic, but it means something to me.  *beam*  Thank you for your patience and feedback and recommendations and just for coming back! 

Congratulations to everyone who won a CSI Fanfic award!  And thank you to everyone who voted for one of my stories.  I'm very flattered and honored.  Especially that someone remembered "What Daisy Saw".  :D 

So I posted my Iron Man fic yesterday and went happily off to read fic in the fandom. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that just about every detail I had included in my story had already been done, repeatedly and well. *snerk* So much for originality. Still, commenters have been kind.

cincoflex suggested it, so I dug up the icon. Because it's true. laura27md , I know you're laughing.

I'm getting close to finishing my NaNo CSI fic, and it looks like it's gonna be fifteen chapters at least. So in the interests of my more-than-patient readers, My First Poll (TM):

Poll #1115095 Poll of Silliness
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17

What day of the week should I update my epic?

No weekends because I can't always be sure I'll have enough time/energy to update. 

ETA: Thanks everyone for voting!  Looks like Thursday is the day.  

NaNoWriMo '07

33015 / 50000 words. 66% done!

I got tagged by cincoflex , so here goes:
( Post the first lines of fic you are yet to finish )

Wow.  I can scarcely believe that I won another CSI fanfiction award--for smut again!  *grin*  And against such competition, too. 

Thank you, everyone who voted, for that or for Hypothesis of Seduction, or indeed voted at all.  I feel very flattered, and very loved. 

I just looked at the csifanficawards page and am startled to discover that six of my stories and one I've co-authored have been nominated.  Six!  And after a not-very-prolific year. 

If I blushed, I would be.  *grin* 

Thank you, everyone who nominated me.  It's a true honor. 

(And yes, I sent mine in just now.  Made it under the deadline, whew.)

cincoflex is up to it again, and blaming me for both of them.  *bows*  Guilty! 

The plagiarist, perhaps reacting to the many angry reviews and messages, has revised her story so that the sentences she copied from my fic are no longer direct plagiarism.  I still wish FF.net would at the very least remove the story, but it is something. 

I'm still surprised at the level of response to this.  I guess folks are just fed up with her repeated offenses. 

Meanwhile, I miss cincoflex already.  *pout* 

I PM'd the plagiarist, trying to remain relatively polite.  Nineteen minutes later I got a reply.  The gist of it is that she has NEVER heard of me or my friends.  She's never read my story, any similarity is coincidence, and I had better not cry 'wolf'.  Many people did takes on the shaving scene...etc. 

Except, the story she stole from isn't the shaving scene, it dates from June '06.  *headshake*  This person strikes me as delusional on some level.  She challenges me to point out ONE copied sentence, just ONE.  Frankly, I can't be bothered.  I'm not going to get into a fight with her; it's probably what she wants.  I made my statement.  She can carry on in her own twisted little dreamworld.  She's not worth my time, really. 

Still, it was quite kind of folks to post to that story and point out that she was plagiarizing.  I appreciate it very much!  Hopefully FF.net will do something this time. 

I just discovered, rather belatedly, that someone on FF.net (known for plagiarizing) has used some of my sentences in a GSR fic. 

I honestly don't know what to think! 

This made me laugh.  So true, so true! 

...Now I suppose someone should fic it.  I'm not volunteering. 

Yesterday someone opened a thread on YTDAW asking for submissions for a to-be-printed collection of CSI fanfiction.  Questions were raised, and the thread was promptly shut down.  For good reason; that was not the place to solicit such things, particularly when the solicitor had not done the proper research and due to the fact that TPTB are known to drop by the boards.  I approve of the shutting down. 

But I have to say I disagree with some of the arguments presented.  Fanfiction as a genre on the whole is not strictly illegal; it is definitely in a legal gray area, but as has been pointed out (and unfortunately I can't find the link) there have been several recent instances of people writing sequels to classics like Gone With the Wind* and Little Women.  All challenges in court have come out in favor of the sequel authors. 

Of course, those examples are for titles that were written by one person, not a conglomerate, and the authors in question are deceased. 

Be that as it may, the publication of fanfic as it is currently defined has actually been going on for roughly forty years, since Classic Trek was canceled.  Long before the Internet, fans were writing and sharing and distributing their work--gen and het and slash**, artwork and poetry and essays and fiction, through fanzines--physical copies of collections or even novels, bought and paid for.  Amateur work, sure, and the money changing hands was mainly to cover the cost of printing (or mimeographing, originally) and mailing.  Nobody's managed to stop it yet, and frankly I haven't heard that anyone's tried particularly hard lately.  But then I don't keep up on the news much. 

Personally, I've had stuff published in collections, and in fact I had an entire fanfic novel published through a fanfic press a few years back.  I never heard a peep from anyone ticked off about copyright.  Granted, the fandom in question was a cancelled TV show that the network was pretty much ignoring.  Doing anything with CSI would be a bit more delicate given its ongoing status and enormous popularity, and honestly, I've very rarely seen CSI in fanzine publications, though it's been a while since I looked. 

But my point is that publishing CSI fanfic in a physical form, as long as it was done discreetly, respectfully, and without any profit motive, is not an impossibility.  I don't know if CBS would move against it; they might not consider it worth hassling over, given the enormous online fanfic presence and the power of fans (which, hopefully, they have not forgotten after the 2004 firing fiasco). 

Maybe it's time someone tried. 



*I've never read Gone With the Wind, but personally, I don't consider it a "classic". 
**The term "slash" actually dates back to early Trek fandom and fanfic, when they started pairing Kirk and Spock.  Gotta love neologisms!